South Australian Council wants Airbnb regulations
Holdfast Bay Council in Adelaide, which runs the area covering South Australia’s most popular beach is demanding that Airbnb-type accommodation be classified as hotels.
It says the change will better regulate the industry, and avoid tourist areas becoming ghost towns in winter and on weekdays.
The council has voted to write to South Australian Planning Minister Stephan Knoll to change planning laws requiring anyone renting out accommodation for less than 28 days to apply for development approval as a hotel. This means they would then have to pay commercial rates on the property.
This will be a radical change because landlords do not have to get development approval to rent out their properties through Airbnb or similar companies.
Hodlfast Bay Council has to manage Glenelg beach, in Holdfast Bay. It is one of the state's top tourist attractions. Also, the suburb has thousands of hotel rooms.
Right now, 300 properties are registered on Airbnb in the region, which includes the beachside suburbs of Brighton, Somerton Park and Seacliff.
Acting Holdfast Bay Mayor Amanda Wilson said the council wanted to make sure that people buying apartments in the area would have some security knowing that other apartments won't be used for short-term stay all of the time.
"We've got a few new towers going up and we want to really make sure the people moving into the new apartment complexes are going to live in Glenelg most of the time and not have these apartments empty during the winter or the weekdays,” Cr Wilson told the ABC.
"We don't have a problem with using our accommodation stock for short-term stay, per se, there's a place for that in Holdfast Bay — we're a place for visitors — but not all of the time the same places."
She said a change in planning laws would create a register of short-term accommodation. That could be used to ban people allowing "party houses".
"That seems to me a pretty common-sense way to regulate it," she told the ABC.
Leon Getler 19th June 2018.
